Lotterywest inspired to give $3m to Perth’s arts sector

The Perth Festival will include the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, directed by Robert Wilson.
Photo: Lesley Leslie-Spinks

by
Brook Turner

The success of the film Red Dog and last February’s Perth Festival has generated $3 million in Lotterywest funding for Western Australia’s arts and film industries.

Premier
Colin Barnett
last night promised a $1.5 million funding fillip for the $17.5 million Perth International Arts Festival, which will be held in February and is the second of four programs by artistic director Jonathan Holloway.

The total budget for the festival will be $2 million higher than in 2012 and includes a six-figure lead sponsorship from Chevron Australia, the biggest ever for Australia’s oldest festival.

The new Lotterywest grant takes its contribution to the festival to $7 million. The same amount will be paid to ScreenWest under a 1993 law mandating that up to 5 per cent of Lotterywest’s net subscriptions be divided between the two.

Historically, Lotterywest has given less than the maximum in view of its other funding commitments, which include hospitals and sport.

What made the difference this year was an 11.5 per cent rise in sales, a series of big Oz Lotto and Powerball jackpots, and state film and festival milestones, said Lotterywest chief executive
Jan Stewart
.

“We effectively gave the festival and industry the maximum we could this year," Ms Stewart said. “It was the combination of sufficient funds plus the success of Jonathan’s festival and [the] film industry this year. After 20 years of development it has really developed from a boutique industry to one capable of making films like Red Dog and Bran Nue Dae."

The funding fillip has allowed Perth the largest program in its 60-year history. “I go to the festival board meetings at which the program is presented and they have to decide what to cut and I did think, ‘well what would you cut’," said Ms Stewart.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Festival general manager Julian Donaldson said “we have been talking to [Chevron] for several years, but there was a tipping point in the corporate community after the 2012 festival". A number of new sponsors are joining the festival, including
iiNet
. “Corporates saw this as a festival that was having a real impact in Perth," Mr Donaldson said.

The 2012 program includes the first Australian visit from the prestigious Berliner Ensemble, performing Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, directed by Robert Wilson; the ambitious street-theatre project that is Argentinean director Mariano Pensotti’s La Marea, a free event that will occupy the lit streetscape of Perth’s Rokeby Road.

American minimalist composer
Philip Glass
will for the first time perform all 20 of his piano etudes, the last three of which were commissioned by the festival itself.

Perth shares
Laurie Anderson
and the Kronos Quartet with the Adelaide festival, which follows it, and the Simon Mordant/
David Gonski
-sponsored Andrew Bovell/Sydney Theatre Company adaptation of
Kate Grenville
’s The Secret River with January’s Sydney Festival.

The Truth 25 Times a Second pairs Belgian choreographer Frederic Flamand and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei with the Ballet National de Marseille.

The American singer Cat Power is slated to return to Australia as part of a national tour, her first since last year, while Melbourne duo Dead Can Dance kicks off its first Australian tour in 20 years in Perth.

The Perth Writers Festival program will include Canadian Man Booker winner
Margaret Atwood
.

“It’s a much broader and more diverse program than we could have achieved without this support and there’s more free work and a greater investment in the WA art community," Mr Donaldson said.